Refugee

We rated this book:

$16.99

In 1938, Nazis break into Josef Landau’s house. They arrest his father and destroy everything they can get their hands on. Months later, the rest of the family receives a telegram from their father who has been released, but they must leave Germany immediately and travel to the other side of world. In 1994, Fidel Castro is in charge of Cuba. There are food shortages and people have had enough. With riots breaking out in the streets, Isabel Fernandez, a skinny eleven year old girl, must get her family out of Cuba to Florida by boat. Syria in 2015 is chaos and Mahmoud Bishara knows it. He also knows that you have to be invisible to survive. But when his home is destroyed and his family must walk to Germany, he wonders if being invisible is not the best way to be after all.

This is an incredible book. Something I really love is that, at the end, the stories connect and come together like pieces to a puzzle. Another great thing is that the chapters switch off from character to character. The infuriating thing about that is that almost all the chapters end in cliff-hangers. And that’s why you don’t just read one chapter at a time of Refugee. You cannot stop reading. But unfortunately, this book is not for little kids. A character dies, there are guns, bombs, prisons, Nazis, and a boy gets bitten by a shark. I do not recommend it for younger readers. I am 11, and I loved it. It all depends on what you’re comfortable with. This book leads you on a heart-pounding, action-packed adventure. This emotional, powerful, amazing book really shows the problems immigrants and refugees face. You are really able to experience what they’re going through. It is truly a masterpiece, and you must read it.

First, I wish I had read the other three books in this series first, though you don’t have to, but I really think you should. For younger kids who might think this book is too big for them, it is not. It is thick, but the words are pretty big and that makes it easier to reach. There are nineteen chapters that help break up the reading and I wish they had put more pictures then two. I know I like pictures and I think it helps make the reading easier for a lot of people. Some of the names are just too hard to say and keep saying and I am not sure why all of these animal books always give animals the weirdest and hardest names.

A cat, a bird, and a frog are the main characters who all have some type of magic. Together they save the queendom only to have stuff go wrong again and they have to go on an adventure to try and prove they are innocent. These three animals can be so funny and kind of remind me of Harry, Hermione, and Ron. If you like Harry Potter and the Warriors, then you will definitely love this book!

Roller Girls: Falling Hard is a story about a girl named Annie Turner who had the difficult choice of staying with her mom in London, or going with her dad, who chose to open up a café in Liberty Heights, Illinois. She chooses to go with her dad and she quickly meets a girl named Lexi who introduces her to roller derby. Annie turns down becoming a cheerleader, something her dad wants her to participate in, to try out roller derby. It is a real-life everyday choice that all kids need to make at some point, doing what we want to do instead of what our parents want us to do. Annie also learns how to adjust to her new school while dealing with the popular girls, and finding her place in the social hierarchy. There was some strong language, but I still really liked this book, I don’t think that the language detracted from the message it was trying to send. I loved this book because it showed how empowered a young girl can be, and this is a great message for us. I hope Megan Sparks continues this series for quite some time!

Plant Your Path is for people who like to play the video game, “Plants versus Zombies.” Just like in the game, you have to defeat zombies by choosing which plants to plant so that the zombies won’t eat your brains. You start out with a pea shooter on your lawn. The book then asks the reader to choose between two different plants to plant next. The reader turns to the indicated page to find out what happens next and to make a new choice. There are 27 different endings based on the choices you make. In many of them, the zombies will eat your brains, but in some of them, you will save the day. The adventure includes Crazy Dave and many of your favorite plants and zombies.

I would recommend this book to all kids who play Plants versus Zombies. I don’t recommend it to kids who aren’t familiar with the game because it wouldn’t really make any sense. If you do play the game, it’s interesting and it is fun to make the choices to see what happens.

In a town called Split Rock, the members of certain families have super powers. Every leap year, at 4:23 pm, each child in these families who is ten years or older receives his or her unique super power. At age 13, Rafter and Benny finally get theirs, which turn out to be worthless.

They try to learn how to be super heroes despite their terrible powers. They fight crime, like robbery and jaywalking. They need to find out who has sabotaged their powers, however. They have a plan to track down one of the so-called bad guys in the library of their school. This is dangerous because the library has moving bookshelves and the villain has disabled the safety mechanism that keeps people from getting squished. One night, they see a light at the dump at the same time that everyone else’s powers also turn worthless, so they go to the dump to investigate. What happens next is exciting.

There is not a lot of adventure at the beginning of this book, but it is very funny and interesting, which makes you want to read on. Once you are about halfway through the book, the adventure is compelling and you want to get to the end. I recommend it to children who like super hero stories and also to kids who like Eragon, Percy Jackson and HIVE.

Fer is struggling with her friendship with the Puck-boy, Rook. She keeps trying to be friends, but Pucks are known for being disloyal, and so far, that has proved true for Rook, too. But Fer can’t spend too much time worrying about their friendship because when she made the rulers of other kingdoms in the Faerieland swear to take off their evil ‘glamories’, she didn’t know the consequences that would have. Now, as the unfulfilled oaths are poisoning the land, Fer must find a way to save both her world and her friendship.

I wish there had been a little bit more explaining of the mythology, because I didn’t really understand that whole thing. But I liked the different worlds that Fer could travel to in the book, and the descriptive scenes of the lands. Fer was a very likeable character, and very creative and brave. Rook was very annoying; most thirteen-year-old boys are (especially in books)! I liked the solutions to the problems they had, and that Fer was always hoping for the best.